David Chandler - Den of thieves

In the Ladypark a yale bleated as it was brought to bay by a pack of feral dogs. It turned to face them with its wicked swinging horns, but it was severely outmatched. If the yale knew it was sacred to the goddess, it didn’t know how to call upon her aid.

In a rarely used chapel on Castle Hill, a certain figure sat with a bottle of wine and a good book. He would not be sleeping that night-at least until he heard from his fellow cabal members, Bikker and Hazoth. When he was certain the ungrateful thief was dead and Ghostcutter was ready to be passed on to a new owner, then he might relax-but only for a moment, before the real work of the conspiracy began.

All across the city hymns were sung. They could be heard through every window and on every street corner.

Everywhere people made merry, or atoned for sins, or simply enjoyed the warm summer’s night.

And on Parkwall Common an ogre walked sedately across the grass and up unto the gates of Hazoth’s villa. The guards there challenged him and shouted for him to leave, but he ignored them, and all else. As if he’d found a pleasant place to spend the evening, the ogre sat down on the grass just beyond the gate, and watched the house with his massive, staring eyes. After a while he folded his hands in his lap. He made no attempt to enter, nor gave any sign of violence. Yet a lightning stroke touching the rose window would have elicited less surprise.

At the side of the house, Malden crouched with Kemper beneath a willow bush. He peered through the dark trying to see what was happening. There were torches guttering at the gate, and he could make out the ogre plain enough, but he needed to see how the guards reacted to Gurrh’s presence.

“Ye’ll know when it’s time, lad,” Kemper soothed.

“We need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice,” Malden insisted. “Are you prepared? You know what you must do?”

“Aye. Now quit yer jawin’. Look, there. Is yon bastard this Bikker ye’re so afeared of?”

“It is,” Malden said, grinding his teeth together. The big swordsman was leaning against the side of the villa, scratching at his beard. He did not look well pleased, which was comforting. He kept craning his head around the side of the house to see what the ogre was up to. Which was nothing.

Malden had foreseen this. It was quite possible that Bikker would see through this phase of the plan. The ogre couldn’t get through the barrier any more than Malden could. The guards were completely safe inside-and of course, they would be perfectly safe even if the barrier were lowered. Bikker might know the meaning of the runes on the ogre’s face and realize he had nothing to fear from the monster.

Yet it would take a man with ice water in his veins not to worry when such a brute showed up on his doorstep for reasons unknown. Bikker was smart, he was disciplined, but Malden was counting on the fact that he had hot blood in him. If Bikker wouldn’t respond to the ogre’s presence, Gurrh had been told to make him react.

“Now, Gurrh,” Malden said, as if the ogre could hear him.

Perhaps he could-who knew what the hearing of an ogre was like? Without apparent provocation, Gurrh rose to his feet and went over to the fence that ringed the villa. He grasped one of the wrought-iron uprights and tore it loose from the crossbeams with a noise like a demon being dragged out of the pit-a groaning, shrieking sound that set Malden’s hair on end. The upright came loose with a clang, and suddenly Gurrh was holding what looked very much like a wicked spear.

The ogre, smiling broadly, swept it through the air and brought it clanging along the other uprights of the fence. The noise was rhythmic and intense and impossible to ignore. A guard shouted for the ogre to stop but his voice was lost in the clamor.

It was enough, perhaps. The guards rushed backward, away from the fence, caterwauling in their fear. Just as Malden had hoped, at the side of the house Bikker pushed himself away from the wall and came striding out toward the gate.

“You there,” the hairy knight called. “You-beastie. What in the name of all that’s perverse do you think you’re doing?”

Gurrh shrugged and brought his spear around for another pass. The clanging, banging noise was even louder this time. It was enough to hurt Malden’s ears, even so far away. Gurrh seemed to pay no attention to Bikker’s demand-he looked for all the world like some mindless brute who had just taken a fancy to making that dreadful racket for his own reasons.

The fact that he was obviously there for some distinct purpose must, Malden hoped, be driving Bikker mad. Bikker might be a ruffian, but he was also a trained soldier, and Malden had learned from Croy that the one thing soldiers hate more in the world is an enemy doing something they don’t understand.

“The master of this house doesn’t want to be disturbed,” Bikker announced. “I don’t know your game-though I can guess your owner, I think. Leave now or I’ll set my dogs on you.”

Gurrh made a third racket, and suddenly Bikker was moving, taking long strides toward the barrier. “Lower this damned thing,” he shouted, and the captain of the guard came running forward to salute. “You three-and you, boy, drive this thing off.”

The four guards he’d chosen balked at the task, but it didn’t take more than a few clouts to get them moving. Bikker must have really put a fear into them, Malden thought. They waited for the captain to make the necessary gesture to lower the barrier, then dashed out through the gates brandishing their polearms. They jabbed and thrusted at the ogre the way a swain pokes at a pig to scare it into motion, but the ogre easily fended off their blows with his spear. One glaive blade got past his defense and scored a hit on his hairy stomach, but Gurrh just laughed. The blade bent and then snapped off its pole.

“Sadu’s blood an’ balls,” Kemper said, astonished.

“All the old stories say how hard it is to slay an ogre, that no normal weapon can cut their furry pelts. Come-this is our time to act. We must be quick.”

The thief and the card sharp ran across the grass toward the fence. Malden slipped through between two uprights while Kemper just walked through them. The two of them kept very low as they hurried across the garden. Malden was terrified that Bikker would turn around and see them, but his attention seemed absorbed by the ogre.

This was exactly according to plan. Thanks to Croy’s recklessness, Hazoth had come to expect an attack on the house-a direct, frontal attack of the kind a knight would make against a fortress. The ogre appeared to be providing exactly that.

Which was not to say this was going to be easy.

Malden and Kemper slipped around the back of the house. Only one guard remained in the garden, and he was doing his best to see what was happening at the front while not technically deserting his post. Bikker had trained and disciplined these guards into a formidable fighting force, but he’d only had a few days to do it. He could not have completely broken all their bad habits in that time.

The back door of the house, which led into the preparatory room behind the dining chamber, was in deep shadow. There were no torches or other lights back there-they would have served no purpose but to ruin the night vision of the guard. Even better, Malden saw that the high window above the preparatory door was open to catch the night air, as it had been a quite warm day. Perfect.

Kemper walked through the door and disappeared. Malden took a length of rope from around his waist and uncoiled it. It was not very thick, nor even particularly strong, but Slag had dipped one end of it in molten silver-at Cutbill’s expense. The silver gave that end some extra weight, so that Malden could toss the end up and through the preparatory window. He let the rope play out, then grasped it tight when he felt it go taut. The other reason for the silver was to allow Kemper to hold it. He braced Malden from inside while the thief climbed up to the preparatory window and through. He clambered down in the darkness and dropped a few feet to the floor. There was just enough light to see Kemper’s teeth glinting in the gloom.